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Self-portrait with a blue spot

/ Georg Baselitz /

1996Oil on canvas

Self-portrait with a blue spot forms part of an autobiographical series, created between 1995 and 1996, in which Baselitz draws on images of childhood and family photographs taken before the war (Vater Johannes, 3 February – 10 March 1996, Mutter Lieselotte 1930, 22-27 March 1996, etc.). The picture could be said to resemble the grotesque figure of an unidentifiable child: the massive head is as touching as it is frightening, its very absence of proportion rendering it fragile. The huge canvas is almost uniformly covered in pink and blue, whose subtle harmony seem to be at odds with the violent way in which the young boy’s features are represented. The presence of the child echoes Die Groβe Nacht im Eimer (The Big Night down the Drain), which led to the artist and the Werner & Katz gallery being charged with public indecency when it was exhibited in Berlin in 1963.